A mountain-gap wind, gap wind or gap flow is a local

wind Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

blowing through a gap between mountains. Gap winds are low-level winds and can be associated with strong winds of 20-40 knots and on occasion exceeding 50 knots. Gap winds are generally strongest close to gap exit. Example flows include the surface winds blowing through the

Strait of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar ( ar, مضيق جبل طارق, Maḍīq Jabal Ṭāriq; es, Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules), also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Medi ...

– one of the strongest winds in this region is called Levanter. Similar winds occur at other gaps in mountain ranges, such as the

tehuantepecer Tehuantepecer, or Tehuano wind, is a violent mountain-gap wind that travels through the Chivela Pass in southern Mexico, across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. It is most common between October and February, with a summer minimum in July. It originate ...

and the jochwinde, and in long channels, such as the

Strait of Juan de Fuca The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about long that is the Salish Sea's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre ...

between the

Olympic Mountains The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus is the highest at ; however, the easter ...

of Washington and Vancouver Island, British Columbia,

Hinlopen Strait The Hinlopen Strait ( no, Hinlopenstretet) is the strait between Spitsbergen and Nordaustlandet in Svalbard, Norway. It is long and wide. The strait is difficult to pass because of pack ice. It is believed to have been named after Thijmen J ...

near

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

. In the

Columbia River Gorge The Columbia River Gorge is a canyon of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Up to deep, the canyon stretches for over as the river winds westward through the Cascade Range, forming the boundary between the sta ...

on the border of Washington and Oregon, the high frequency of gap winds has led to the installation of

wind farms Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

, and the large amount of

wind surfing Windsurfing is a wind propelled water sport that is a combination of sailing and surfing. It is also referred to as "sailboarding" and "boardsailing", and emerged in the late 1960s from the aerospace and surf culture of California. Windsurfing ga ...

that takes place on the Columbia River. Another example is the Koshava wind in Serbia that blows along the Danube River. The South Carpathian Mountains and Balkan Mountains are channelling the flow into the Danube River basin in Romania and the exiting jet at the

Iron Gates The Iron Gates ( ro, Porțile de Fier; sr, / or / ; Hungarian: ''Vaskapu-szoros'') is a gorge on the river Danube. It forms part of the boundary between Serbia (to the south) and Romania (north). In the broad sense it encompasses a rou ...

is known as the Koshava wind. The main characteristics of the Koshava wind are its high wind speed, southeasterly direction, persistence, and gustiness. More generally, corridor winds affect the local climate of a region (south of France), as well as vegetation. They are also vectors of violent fires in the affected areas. The resulting gusts can reach more than 100 km/h and cause property damage.

References

*Bendall, A. A., 1982: Low-level flow through the Strait of Gibraltar. The Meteorological Magazine, Vol. 111, pp. 149–153 *Colle, B. A., C. F. Mass, 2000: High-Resolution Observations and Numerical Simulations of Easterly Gap Flow through the Strait of Juan de Fuca on 9–10 December 1995. Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 128, pp. 2398–2422. *Colle, B. A., C. F. Mass, 1998: Windstorms along the Western Side of the Washington Cascade Mountains. Part I: A High-Resolution Observational and Modeling Study of the 12 February 1995 Event. Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 126, pp. 28–52. *Overland, J. E., and B. A. Walter, 1981: Gap winds in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 109, pp. 2221–2233. *Scorer, R.S., 1952: Mountain-gap winds; a study of the surface wind in Gibraltar. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society: Vol. 78, pp. 53–59 *Sharp, J. and C. F. Mass, 2002: Columbia Gorge Gap Flow: Insights from Observational Analysis and Ultra-High Resolution Simulation. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: Vol. 83, pp. 1757–1762. *Steenburgh, W. J., D. M. Schultz, B. A. Colle, 1998: The Structure and Evolution of Gap Outflow over the Gulf of Tehuantepec, Mexico. Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 126, pp. 2673–2691. Mesoscale meteorology Mountain meteorology {{climate-change-stub

See also

References